


What I Should Have Said

by WilmaKins



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Aunt Peggy Carter, Communication, Communication Failure, Emotions, Hurt Steve Rogers, Hurt Tony Stark, Lack of Communication, M/M, Missed Connections, Old Peggy Carter, POV Steve Rogers, Protective Steve Rogers, Steve Feels, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Tony Feels, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-23
Updated: 2018-10-23
Packaged: 2019-08-06 12:54:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16388102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WilmaKins/pseuds/WilmaKins
Summary: Ever since Siberia, Steve has been thinking of Tony. All those things he was so scared to tell him...And, in the end, it was what he didn't tell him that ruined them.ORSteve Rogers reflects on all the times he should have just told Tony what he was thinking.





	What I Should Have Said

**Author's Note:**

> So, this may end up getting brought into the 'Whatever Makes You Happy' series at some point, as it's about the same Steve and Tony and set in the same universe. BUT it *is* it's own stand alone story, and can be read as such (and might get left as such, or developed into something else... yeah, I'm new to all this)
> 
> But, anyway, I really hope you like it!

Steve had always hated the cold.

 

People tended to go quiet when he said that, or drop their eyes, obviously assuming it had something to do with the ice. But Steve hating the cold had nothing to do with being frozen – actually, Steve _didn’t_ associate the crash with being cold. He’d been knocked out by the initial impact, blissfully unaware of the ice as it was putting him to sleep. He remembered the cockpit of the plane, and the bed in Fury’s little soundstage, and nothing in between.

 

No, Steve had hated the cold since long before that. Since he’d watched his mother slowly die of TB in a draughty little house in Brooklyn. It had been Steve’s job to shelter his mom, to make that house safe and warm for her now that his father was gone. But he couldn’t. He was just a skinny little kid in the middle of the depression, no different from all the others crying out for help. He’d watched his mother cough and wheeze, sure he could have made her better if he could have just made her warm.

 

And then she died.

 

So yeah, Steve hated the cold. Cold nights like this made him feel vulnerable, they reminded him that he wasn’t really any different to the kid that failed in the 1930s, that death was always standing at his shoulder. Cold nights made him introspective and sad.

 

And it wasn’t like he needed any help with that, these days.

 

It had been three months since Siberia. Three months since he destroyed the only home he had. Three months since he left Tony on the floor of that bunker…

 

He sighed heavily, his breath fogging the air around him like smoke. It was five below zero in Copenhagen, and their little safe house had no heating but many cracks in the wall. It was barely warmer inside than outside. He could make out the shape of Wanda, Natasha and Sam, lying on the floor with blankets wrapped tightly around their shoulders. Steve wondered if any of them were actually asleep. He wondered if they were kept up all night by regrets and what if’s like he was.

 

Up until now, Steve had spent most of his nights thinking about the things he wished _hadn’t_ happened. All the things he wished he’d never done, never said. It was a hot, irritable thought process, and always deeply unsatisfying. These things _did_ happen, didn’t they? Working out what might have happened was of no use to anyone. But he just kept doing it. Like he kept having that same nightmare and kept trying to change the end, as though it would matter. As though if he didn’t bring that shield down into Tony’s chest in a dream, he might be rewarded by waking up somewhere else.

 

But tonight was different. Tonight his thoughts were slower, and more substantial. _Like a glacier_. Tonight was hopeless, rather than desperate. Tonight was just sad. And, tonight, Steve found himself thinking about all the things he wished he _had_ said. Not just the obvious. Not just at the end.

 

And, wow, there was quite a list, wasn’t there?

 

Thinking about it now, Steve realised, it had always been about the things he _hadn’t_ said. That if he’d just gotten around to _one_ of the things on that list, everything might have been better. Going back and saying a few words to Tony would have had more impact than anything he could have unsaid.

 

In fact… five things. By the end of the night, Steve had whittled the list down to five simple sentences that could have changed everything.

 

Which didn’t make him feel better, at all.

 

**“You don’t have to let people hand you things”**

 

Steve had been living in Avengers Tower, and the 21st century, for about four months. Both were still pretty overwhelming.

 

From the moment he opened his eyes in the morning, he was assaulted by things he didn’t understand. Technology beyond his wildest dreams, offering to help with tasks that hadn’t even existed in the forties. News coming in, instantly and wirelessly, from places Steve had never heard of, about issues he couldn’t comprehend. Food he didn’t know how to prepare, words he didn’t know how to pronounce, questions he couldn’t even think of asking.

 

But, more confusing than that – all the rules were different.

 

The shift in social assumptions had floored him more than anything. Mainly, like all people, he hadn’t known he _had_ social assumptions, before. At least the new technology and strangely shaped fruit warned him they were alien, gave him some cue to ask about or avoid them. But social norms are different. They’re the things you say, do or expect without thinking. The things you don’t realise you’ve misunderstood until you’ve already messed it up. Things that no one else thinks to explain, because they’ve taken them for granted too.

 

Steve had been trying to pick it all up, but it was slow going. A lot of the time, he felt like he was play acting, copying things without really understanding the significance of them. He knew that he wasn’t allowed to talk about smoking, ever, but it was still okay to talk publicly about getting drunk. He knew that women’s clothing was now a very political issue, and it absolutely wasn’t his place to comment on it.

 

He knew Tony Stark didn’t like having things handed to him. So, he didn’t.

 

By now, Steve had worked out that this was a particular quirk of Tony’s, rather than a part of 21st Century etiquette. He’d heard the others tease him for it; he’d even joined in, gently, when he was quite sure that Tony was being ridiculous. But still, he put things on the table in front of Tony, never in his hands. It was just a habit, one of many meaningless gestures he’d hardwired in.

 

Until tonight.

 

Tonight, Steve was tired. Days in the 21st century were just longer – full of information and noise, extending into the wee hours under artificial lighting. Steve had adopted the futuristic habit of staying up late; he just couldn’t get out of the habit of getting up early. It left him with hours of frantic, incomprehensible activity that he had to work twice as hard as everyone else to keep up with. He was exhausted at the end of _every_ day. And, today, there had been an incident in Central Park. Nothing major. A bunch of kids playing with something they’d found in the aftermath of the Chitauri attack, who’d only really managed to scare themselves. To anyone else, a perfectly routine mission. It was only Steve who was scanning everything, unable to understand the teenagers speedy slang, unsure how much damage had been done and how much had looked like that anyway… All he wanted to do now was to get Tony to sign his damn incident report, so that he could go to bed.

 

When he got to Tony’s door Steve was immediately greeted with a wall of sound. A violent noise that he knew was heavy metal, but still couldn’t recognise as music. Everywhere he looked there were screens, all moving with numbers and graphs and camera feeds. In the middle of all this chaos, surrounded by scrap metal, Tony was repairing his suit. The bright flash of the blowtorch, the shower of sparks, the hissing sound of tortured metal. Tony was the physical embodiment of everything that frightened and frustrated Steve about the future – bright and loud and fast and dangerous and still wide awake at midnight. Steve’s head throbbed. If he could have turned around and left, he would have.

 

Instead, he forced himself to march across the workshop. Tony turned the blowtorch off when he saw Steve, and silenced the music with a wave of his hand. There was a physical relief, like Steve had put down a heavy weight. And he was just so tired, so exhausted by the constant sensory input, so overwhelmed by the sudden reprieve, that he just handed Tony the papers.

 

He didn’t even realise what he’d done until he felt Tony take them, until he recognised that Tony’s response was wrong.

 

“Sorry” Steve muttered.

“Hm?” Tony didn’t even look up from signing the paperwork. He really hadn’t noticed what Steve had just done. Steve felt a little prickle of irritation at that. He couldn’t help wondering why Tony made a fuss about it, if he didn’t really care. Steve felt like a bit of an idiot for making the effort – he even wondered if that was the point. If Tony only did this to see if he could, to see if people like Steve would indulge him…

 

He remembered, not long after the battle of New York, a SHIELD agent had come to the Tower with a raft of papers for Tony. She’d held them out expectantly, as any reasonable person might, but Tony had told her he didn’t like to be handed things and gestured to the table. And the agent smiled and said “No way, that’s so strange – I don’t like picking things up off of the floor” And then she’d let the papers fall, scattering on the floor between them, and smiled at him “and then people look at you like you’re weird.” Steve had to try so hard not to laugh at the time. It wasn’t that he didn’t like Tony. He’d found plenty to like about Tony, after the rough start was behind them. But he _had_ quite enjoyed seeing Tony put in his place. Seeing Tony nudge the papers with his foot, and then have to kneel down to gather them up, had seemed exactly what Tony deserved – just in general. Steve found himself thinking back to that incident with a bitter sort of glee, now.

 

And then he realised that Tony was looking at him, questioning. Steve realised his face was probably as angry as his head, and that he still hadn’t answered Tony. So, even though he couldn’t really be bothered with it, he felt obliged to explain.

“I thought you didn’t like to be handed things?” Steve sighed, trying not to sound antagonistic. But Tony’s face just melted into a smile.

“Well, I trust _you_ ” He explained with a laugh. That tone people used when they found one of Steve’s misunderstandings endearing. Steve just frowned.

 

_What has that got to do with anything?_

 

“I think I can take as a given that Captain America isn’t handing me a bomb” Tony clarified, when Steve didn’t say anything. The pounding in Steve’s head actually stalled for a second, he was so distracted by the realisation – _that’s why he does it?_

 

“Why would anyone be trying you a bomb?” Steve asked, his voice not quite as hard edged.

“Oh, people have their reasons.” Tony joked, and then he shrugged “What can I say, I’m paranoid. But just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.”

“But you’ve been doing this since before you were Iron Man” Steve thought out loud.

“I wrote my first anti-kidnapping plan when I was six” Tony informed him, proudly.

“Why?”

“Because I was kidnapped when I was five.” Tony answered, as though it was nothing.

 

It hit Steve then. What they were really talking about, what it really meant. The thought of a little kid, a little Tony, being snatched away and held for ransom… He thought about it hypothetically, first. How awful the very idea was. And then he realised, it really had happened. To Tony.

 

_That’s why he does it._

 

“You were kidnapped when you were five?” Steve repeated.

“I’ve been kidnapped _twice_ ” Tony pretended to brag, handing Steve his papers back. “Oh, no, wait, three times – Afghanistan.” And he seemed to laugh at himself, for forgetting it counted.

 

But then, Steve had forgotten it counted, too. Steve had been right in the middle of being shocked that Tony had been ever been kidnapped, only to realise that he had already known that. He just hadn’t thought of it that way. He hadn’t really thought of it much, at all…

 

He thought about it now. He thought about Tony, held in a cave in Afghanistan, with a car battery wired into his chest. He thought of Tony at five years old, tied to a chair or drugged or locked in the boot of a car. He thought of Tony, always being nervous about what horrible thing might be about to happen to him, always feeling responsible for keeping himself safe from the world. Not wanting people to hand him things, because the world he knew was full of horrible people who would do him harm…

 

He thought of that agent again, making Tony pick his papers up on the floor. He remembered the way Tony had kicked through them first… _checking…_ Steve hated himself, then. He thought of this nervous tick Tony had developed after years of trauma… and Steve had laughed at it. He’d let other people tease Tony for it. He’d watched Tony kneel down and pick those papers up. He wished so much he hadn’t, now. He wished so much he’d intervened, told Tony ‘you don’t have to let people hand you things, if you don’t want’, that he’d picked those papers up for him.

 

He thought about saying it, now. Saying sorry… But he didn’t know how to do it. Men were so different, now, so much more open is some ways, so insecure and aggressive in others. Was this Tony making light of his past, because that’s what Tony did, or was this how the world saw kidnapping now? Was it rude to comment? Would Steve offend him? It would have been hard enough to work that out with anyone, but that was Tony. Bright, fast, loud Tony, who’d never been one to let Steve get away with putting his foot in it… His head started pounding again, right on cue.

 

In the end, he decided it was better to say nothing than the wrong thing. He just took his papers, and went to bed.

 

**“We were the same, when we were kids”**

 

Steve’s first Christmas was proving a bit of a challenge.

 

He’d been at the Tower for about nine months by then, and, in general, things _had_ been getting better. He was still having to translate most things in his head, but it was at least getting more natural. There were places, little pockets, where he could feel comfortable. His room was mostly set up around his preferences, so he could be there without thinking too hard, and he knew his team well enough to chat now, even if he still occasionally got it wrong.

 

But Christmas had thrown him.

 

Everything was so different – but not quite different enough. If Christmas had been transformed beyond recognition it might actually have been better. He could have convinced himself that it was a completely new, alien holiday and simply played along. But he just kept seeing things that reminded him of Christmas, the real Christmas, and weren't. Things that were electronic, and wireless, and automatic, trendy or ironic or modern. _Wrong_. He just kept thinking that everything seemed wrong. A pale imitation of Christmas, like being reunited with a lost love only to find they'd changed into someone else. He was awkward around Christmas now, not sure how he'd celebrate it even if he wanted to. 

 

But he didn't want to. Even if Christmas hadn't been ruined now, he didn't want to.  It may have been seventy years to the rest of the world, but as far as Steve was concerned, this was his first Christmas without Bucky. From his point of view, it had been less than a year since he watched Bucky fall to his death - and yet the whole world had forgotten him completely. There was no one on earth who'd have a clue who he was talking about if he were to actually talk about what he missed... no, he wasn't interested in celebrating Christmas. For the first time in his life, he couldn't wait for Christmas to be over.

 

In the last few months, Steve had gotten into the habit of wandering up to Tony's workshop when he started thinking like this. Tony could always be counted on for a philosophical conversation, when Steve needed one. The fringes of scientific theories, broad political ideology, whether you'd rather take on a flock of duck sized horses or one horse sized duck - hypothetical conversations that weren't about either of them personally, and would have been the same at any point in history. White noise and comfortable company didn't actually fix any of his problems, but they gave him a break from them, sometimes. It had been happening more and more since the middle of November, now that the workshop was the only room in the tower that wasn't festooned with decorations - fire safety concerns, apparently. 

 

But today Steve must have been in a darker mood that usual. As soon as he walked through the door he could tell, Tony was busy - and his heart sank. Ordinarily, if Tony was working on something when Steve arrived, Steve would just sit down and watch. That could be comforting too, sometimes. But today, Steve took it personally. He knew it was irrational, but it happened anyway. As soon as he saw Tony frowning over a desk full of blueprints, Steve didn't want to be there anymore. 

 

Tony had already seen him. He looked up and smiled, turning away from his work to welcome Steve - but the mood had already set in. Steve just felt uncomfortable, now. 

"Hey, what's up?" Tony called, friendly enough. It wasn't 'what do you want' and Steve knew it wasn't, but that's still what it felt like. Steve scrambled for something he could use as a reason for being there, something he could leave after.

"Did you ever give Natasha a baby picture?" He remembered, out of nowhere. Natasha had decided to make cards for the Christmas Party gift baskets, and the design required a picture of each of them as a kid. As she'd told everyone, numerous times, she was only waiting on Tony's.

"No" Tony groaned, "Can't she just google one?"

"Apparently not" Steve shrugged, although, of course, she'd let Steve google his - Steve didn't have a single thing from his own childhood, anymore. 

"Alright, hang on" Tony sighed, and brought up one of his magical floating holograms. Steve could just about make out the photos he was scrolling through with a wave of his hand. "Ah-ha" Tony smiled, triumphantly, and enlarged the picture he'd found. A small, slight little boy with big brown eyes, posing awkwardly in front of a grand looking building. "That'll do?"

 

Steve smiled in spite of himself. It was so obviously Tony, and yet he looked so different. In a way, it was strange to think that a man as big and bold as Tony had ever been small. 

"How old are you there?"

"Fifteen." Tony told him, and Steve did a literal double take. He was expecting eleven or twelve. Thirteen at a push. Wow. Tony had been little when he was little...

"Where are you?" Steve asked, because he thought it would have been rude to say, 'fifteen? Really?'

"MIT" Tony smiled "That's my first day of college."

 

Steve just looked at him for a second. He almost said, what? But, of course, Steve knew that. Or, rather, Steve knew that Tony had graduated when he was seventeen, and now that he thought about it... now that he actually _saw_ it... looking back at the child in the photograph, thinking that he was about to start a degree, it suddenly seemed ridiculous. 

"Sorry, you just look so young to be starting college" Steve mumbled after a moment, and Tony grinned.

"Well, you can make yourself bigger." He shrugged.

 

And Steve knew _exactly_ what Tony meant.

 

Well, okay, he knew that he and Tony had gone about it in entirely different ways. Tony, he assumed, had been arrogant and sarcastic and overly confident, whereas he'd gone for stoic and stubborn and ideological - but it would have been the same thing. Two little boys with big ideas, pretending to be brave until they were. Protecting themselves. It was the first time Steve had really felt something in common with anyone in the 21st century, the first time he might have had a conversation he was fully part of - 

 

But he didn't.

 

He was still just too sad to muster the enthusiasm. This brief feeling of companionship wasn't enough to undo his mood, at least not in time. Not before he remembered that Tony was busy, and he wasn't going to be much company, and that this was the sort of conversation he didn't have anymore. 

"I'll send it to her now" Tony promised, and Steve smiled a thank you, and left. 

 

**"I'd Love To Have A Drink With You"**

 

Steve quite liked the fancier functions that Tony dragged him along to. 

 

The opposite would have been true, in the forties. The upscale events that ‘Captain America’ was forced to attend had always been his least favourite, venues where he felt out of place and extravagance that just made him uncomfortable. But then, in the forties, there were parties he would rather have been at. Back then he could wish to be somewhere else, somewhere he was used to, with people he actually knew. Those places didn't exist in the 21st century. Now the fancy functions were the most familiar, the events least influenced by current trends. He felt exactly as out of place at these parties as he did in the forties, and that was as familiar as things got for him these days. 

 

And, by the way, these were the nights when Tony wore a tux.

 

Steve had known that Tony was attractive the moment he met him, obviously. It had been one of many things that irritated Steve about Tony, in the beginning. Yet another inconvenient, uncomfortable layer to the most confusing thing Steve had found in the future. But, slowly, as Tony had stopped being the most confusing thing, and interacting in general got to be less daunting... a lot of things weren't quite such a big deal, these days. Liking how Tony looked in a tux wasn't a big deal.

 

Thinking that Tony looked especially pretty tonight wasn’t a big deal, really. There was always an awkward few moments in the beginning while Steve willed himself not to blush, but he got over it quickly. And Tony was particularly warm this evening, smiling freely and cracking harmless jokes from the moment they got into the car. It made Steve happy, just _happy,_ for a moment, to see Tony like that. Tony had been tired and burdened for the last few weeks, mired in some political issue at the DODC. Steve hadn’t realised how worried he’d been about him, until he felt that surge of relief, tonight.

 

That feeling had carried over. The evening had actually been… fun. Enjoyable, at least. There was still that anxious feeling, like if Steve let himself think what he was doing for a second it would all fall apart – but as long as he didn’t, he was having quite a nice time. Tony stayed within sight, like he always did, appearing like magic every time Steve got trapped in a conversation with someone awful. But it didn’t happen quite so often tonight. In fact, when the evening started winding down, Steve actually had to look around to find him. That had never happened before. Usually, Steve was so socially anxious that he knew exactly where Tony was at all times.

 

When he saw Tony, Steve immediately recognised something about him. Some quality that he couldn’t put his finger on, at first, something his body understood before his head did. Steve felt himself smile, a warm, liquid feeling pooling in his stomach. Whatever Tony was doing right now, whatever this… _thing_ was, Steve had seen it before. This was that thing Steve liked…

 

Steve saw Tony look directly at him, and _smile_. A very particular smile, that Steve couldn’t help returning. He watched the way Tony walked over to him, just because he liked looking at it.

“You okay?” Tony checked, his voice rich and fluid. _That_ voice.

“Yeah, this was fun” Steve smiled, genuinely. Tony’s face lit up, so open and easy to read…

“Yeah? You didn’t get stuck talking to the Brooklyn… Youth. Choir?”

 

 _Ah._ _He’s had a drink_.

 

It was the strange pacing of his speech that finally tipped Steve off, that very careful pattern used by people who were trying not to stumble. He’d heard Bucky do it a thousand times – the speech of someone who is not drunk, but has ‘had a drink’. Steve felt a blush run up his neck, from nowhere, a deeper urge to smile. He knew there was something quite nice about Tony having a drink, but he wasn’t sure what it was.

 

But Steve did know – he had literally just worked out, in fact – that he _liked_ it when Tony had a drink. As in, this was ‘that thing’. Steve liked it when Tony giggled, he liked it when Tony was playful, he liked it when Tony was a bit softer around the edges-

 

He didn’t know if he liked that he liked it, though.

 

Suddenly, Steve felt a bit exposed. Just off centre. He’d just become aware of something he couldn’t think about right now, something that felt decidedly inappropriate.

 

“No, I did actually” Steve laughed, but he heard it – he didn’t sound _quite_ as natural now. He sounded exactly like someone who had been thinking of something else, in fact. Tony frowned, and Steve felt a little pang of panic. Like he’d been caught out. Like he’d ruined something.

“You sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah” Steve answered, too quickly. “No, really, it’s been good. Most fun I’ve ever had while sober at a party” He meant it to be a joke. It was just the thing he was thinking of, the first thing that he could find to fill the gap.

 

Oh, why had he said that?

 

He saw the little flash of hurt in Tony’s eyes, the way he dropped his shoulders just so. Like he was ashamed. And Steve so nearly said something. _No, I didn’t mean-_

 

What? What could he follow that up with?

 

He could hardly say that he liked that Tony had had a drink, now could he? Captain America talking a man into getting drunk – _while he wasn’t_ – because, what, he liked looking at it? Creepy, in any century, just creepy.

 

But it wasn’t just that. He _did_ like that Tony could have a drink tonight, for some other reason. Some reason he wished he could find words for in time. Some way to express that he knew how hard Tony worked, that he was always _on_ , that Steve understood, that he would have liked to have had a drink with him-

 

God, he really would have liked to have had a drink with him.

 

But he couldn’t say that either. For one, he hadn’t even thought about alcohol, what with everything else, he didn’t even know what he would say about it. And it was all too deep, and too personal-

 

And this pause had gone on _way_ too long.

 

“You want to head off soon?” Tony asked casually. And Steve thought, no, he hadn’t wanted to leave.

 

But he kinda did now. So.

 

**“I’m Sure Peggy Would Love To See You”**

 

Steve marched into Tony’s workshop with full Captain America focus. So much so that Tony instinctively reached to activate his suit – until he realised Steve was smiling.

“What’ve I done?” Was Tony’s second guess. Steve’s smile broke into a grin.

“You never told me that you were on a soccer team that Peggy coached.” Steve said, and watched as Tony melted under the memory.

“Oh, God, I’d repressed that” Tony groaned, letting his head fall into his hands – mainly to mask the fact that he was grinning too.

“Purple kit” Steve reminded him, and Tony looked up at him, dead serious.

“She has pictures?” He asked, and Steve laughed.

“Alas, no. But she has a photographic memory and a real gift for description”

“Oh, Aunt Peggy” Tony sighed, mock exasperated. Steve blinked.

 

“ _Aunt_ Peggy?” He clarified, narrowing his eyes.

“Yeah.” Tony frowned. “Well, not _really_ , obviously, in a family-friend way” He looked at Steve as if to say _you knew that._ And, yeah, Steve had known that… but he hadn’t known Tony called her ‘Aunt Peggy’…

“I knew you knew her.” Steve clarified, although, in truth, he hadn’t thought much about that, either “I didn’t know you were…close.”

“When I was a kid” Tony shrugged, trying to be cool.

“You never said anything about it.”

“Well, I thought maybe I could keep a lid on the embarrassing stories” He joked, “Of which there are no more, by the way, so you don’t have to ask her…”

 

Steve had known Tony for a year now, and he knew what Tony was doing. In the beginning, Steve assumed that Tony would never give him an inch, that there would be a snarky comeback ready-loaded for every one of his misunderstandings. The whole modern world had been after Steve then, or that’s what it felt like. A constant stream of new information and corrections, questions he couldn’t answer and jokes at his expense. That had all had Tony’s face, once. But, while Steve still thought Tony had _something_ to do with that initial impression, he also recognised that a lot of it was just him being defensive. He recognised, now, that Tony had let him get away with a lot – it was just that, because Tony _hadn’t_ pointed it out, Steve had never noticed. And, more importantly, Steve now knew that Tony helped him more than he’d ever realised. That he’d never realised because Tony had always been so good at it.

 

Steve probably wouldn’t have noticed what Tony was doing right now, if he hadn’t been so sensitive about it. Tony was so effortlessly natural in conversations like these, it was so easy to get carried along with them, to take Tony at face value. To take from his tone that nothing was a big deal, and everything was just a bit funny, and you probably wouldn’t be interested anyway…And then Tony would gently steer the conversation elsewhere, away from whatever he thought Steve didn’t want to talk about… Suddenly, Steve could see him doing it. Making a joke to deflect him. Protecting him from something. Coaching him through this conversation.

 

He didn’t like it.

 

Mainly, he assumed he didn’t like it because they were talking about Peggy. Tony helping him navigate the new world was one thing, but getting involved in Steve’s relationship with Peggy was something else entirely. Steve _didn’t_ like the idea of Tony inserting himself into the one thing that wasn’t about the 21 st Century, and he resented the implication that Peggy was one of the things he needed explaining to him. He wanted there to be one thing he didn’t need to have explained to him. And he didn’t like the idea that Tony knew things about Peggy that he didn’t, he _especially_ didn’t like the idea of Tony deciding what he should know about her-

 

But he didn’t like that there was something he didn’t know about Tony, either. He felt like this, of all things, was something Tony would have mentioned. He felt hurt, and slightly left out. Offended that Tony expected him to believe that stupid line about ‘embarrassing stories’.

 

Whether he recognised it or not, the next words out of his mouth were just as much about his relationship with Tony as his relationship with Peggy.

 

“I can’t believe you never told me that” And there was just a bit too much injury in it for Tony to brush it aside. He dropped the act, immediately, and took a breath before he spoke again.

“I dunno. I just thought you might not want to spend your time with Peggy talking about _me._ And, let’s be honest, the moment anyone mentions me, that’s all anyone wants to talk about” Because he couldn’t be quite this real without throwing in some joke to soften it. But Steve still knew he was being honest when he said “I just thought… Peggy should be yours.”

 

Steve was immediately moved by that. His irritation was instantly swallowed up by a surge of something like affection. That was just so… thoughtful. So much deeper than Steve would ever have given him credit for, even now. And, now that Steve knew what Tony had been doing, he realised – it _had_ been important. It had mattered that his time with Peggy had been theirs alone, it had been so much easier to talk to the woman he’d once known without having to talk about the things that had happened in between. It _would_ have been different, if either of them had mentioned Tony. It would have brought the 21 st century and the Avengers and the chaos of his head into that room with them, from the start. Instead of which, Tony had quietly let them have something else. Sacrificed something, forgone something, just so that Steve could have it. All the while knowing that Steve would never know. Never even notice. And Steve had actually just told him off for that.

 

Well, now he felt bad.

 

But Tony smiled when Steve did, apparently just happy not to have offended him. And Steve realised – he didn’t mind Tony coming into that room with them, now. It _was_ important that he hadn’t, before, but things were different now. Tony wasn’t just ‘The 21 st Century’; Tony was Tony. Tony was a part of his life now, and he’d been a part of Peggy’s, and that might have been confusing in the beginning – but it seemed nice, now. It was actually what he wanted, now. To talk to another human being about something they both knew, to be a _part_ of something… That’s where his initial hurt had come from, that’s what he’d thought Tony was withholding, that’s what he’d meant when he said ‘I can’t believe you didn’t tell me’. What he should have said was ‘You can tell me now, though. I’d like you to.’

 

What he really should have said was ‘I’m sure Peggy would love to see you’.

 

And he really would have said that one. This time it was just a matter of circumstances, the simple fact that Steve didn’t get to the words quickly enough. Before Tony could carry on talking.

 

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it to be a big secret or anything – I thought you knew most of it, that I just wasn’t…mentioning it” Tony explained. “I was just trying to avoid meeting you like, hi, so you would’ve been my uncle Steve, huh?”

 

Steve’s stomach just went from under him.

 

_Uncle Steve?_

 

Oh, no. No. He did _not_ like that.

 

“Yeah, when you put it that way…” Steve answered, screwing his face up a bit, like he’d just bitten into something and realised it wasn’t food. But Tony missed that one, or rather, simply assumed Steve was playing along with the joke.

“Those soccer games would’ve been different, if you hadn’t gone into the ice…” Tony mused, as though it was just an amusing thought experiment. Just chatting about Peggy, like Steve had _just_ been telling him to do-

 

God, Steve needed him to stop talking. Now.

 

Because ‘Uncle Steve’ had been flesh creeping enough, without Tony painting the picture of what that would actually have been like… was like… Steve _was_ that person, wasn’t he? He _would_ have been the old man, standing on the sidelines with Aunt Peggy, cheering little Tony on…

 

It was bad enough that made him feel old. It would have been enough to have been reminded, so effectively, that he _wasn’t_ like Tony, he wasn’t a member of this generation or anything like any of Tony’s friends.

 

But he was attracted to Tony.

 

Uncle Steve was attracted to little Tony – that was so awful there was literally a word for it. And, okay, he _knew_ it was the wrong word. If he could have bared to have thought about it, he would have known that he obviously wouldn’t have been attracted to Tony – ever – if he really had seen him grown up. But it still felt dirty. He couldn’t unsee the link. He thought about telling Peggy, his contemporary and one-time love Peggy, that he’d thought about that little boy she used to coach in _that_ way. Even adding ‘now that he’s grown up’ didn’t help.

 

Looking back on this incident later, Steve would never be able to remember how he eventually clawed his way out of that conversation. Only that it had felt painful, and awkward, and that Tony absolutely knew something was wrong. And Steve did feel bad for that. He knew he’d switched from friendly to hurt to moved to offended in the space of a few minutes, he knew exactly why Tony was confused and he knew it was all his fault – but what could he do? He could hardly explain, now could he? And he couldn’t, just _couldn’t_ , sit there while Tony went through all his childhood memories of Peggy – like Steve had just told him to.

 

In fact, he never mentioned Peggy to Tony again. He didn’t know whether Tony ever saw her again before she died.

 

**“That isn’t how your parents died…”**

 

Steve wasn’t at all surprised to find that Sam had magically transformed into Tony.

 

Steve knew he was in a hospital, by now. He’d been here for nearly a week and had woken up in this bed enough times to expect it. He’d remembered to brace for the blinding white of the clinical surroundings. But he was still being fed painkillers through a drip, still fighting off the effects of his beating and still unable to process all the trauma he’d been through. His thoughts were blurry when he first opened his eyes. At first, he just knew he was in a hospital, and he knew Tony was sitting by his bedside, and both things seemed perfectly natural.

 

It took him a few dizzy, floaty moments to remember.

 

“Hey.” He croaked, always surprised by how much speaking still hurt. Tony looked up at him, and for just a second there was a look of pure joy and relief on his face. The way those golden-brown eyes widened, and lit up… Steve liked it. It gave him a warm, safe feeling, with just an edge of something else. Something his drug addled brain was well beyond understanding.

 

_Something nice is happening. Pretty._

But Tony had already blinked it away, and replaced it with a stern look.

“ _I’m_ supposed to be the reckless one, Rogers” Tony warned him, and Steve laughed softly. It hurt his ribs. “I’m serious – you yelled at me once for flying into battle without a working _radio_ ” Tony reminded him “I can just imagine what you’d have said if I’d taken the whole of SHIELD on, on my own”

 

Steve’s ribs hurt again, although this time whatever had happened was _inside_ his chest.

 

_There is no more SHIELD. SHIELD is HYDRA. Fury. Bucky. Project Insight._

 

It wasn’t so much that he remembered what had happened – he was still too out of it to understand the specifics, or the chronology, or the meaning. But the feelings were so much clearer than the details. Whatever had happened, it _felt_ ominous, and frightening, and sad.

 

“Why didn’t you call me?” Tony asked, sincerely. And, at first, Steve could only remember wanting to. All the times he’d thought about doing it. He had a different reason for not calling, each time. Not realising what was happening, not having time right then, not knowing which systems he could trust, wanting to protect Tony… none of those reasons made sense, before he worked out what had really been happening.

“I’m sorry” Steve started, his voice like ground glass in his throat “It’s a long story-” But, mercifully, Tony cut him off.

“It’s okay” He spoke kindly, with a soft shake of his head “You can tell me later. _Listening_ to you try to talk is painful right now – like, more so than usual.”

 

 _I love you_.

 

Because, obviously, Steve knew _that_. Way before he knew he was in a hospital, before he’d even remembered who Tony was. Before he remembered why that was supposed to be a big deal, why it was complicated. He might even have blurted it out, if it wasn’t _such_ an effort to speak – and wouldn’t that have been awful?

 

Instead, Steve just smiled, and was comforted for a moment by Tony simply being there. And then something in him cooled, like something stirring deep below the water. An uncomfortable feeling, like being watched.

 

_You’ve forgotten something terrible…_

 

But he’d probably forgotten lots of terrible things, right? He knew something awful had happened – lots of awful things had happened. He just hadn’t processed them. It was just that.

 

“Where’s Sam?” Steve remembered, wondering if that was the nagging concern burrowing up from within him.

“In the canteen, with Happy” Tony told him, and then carried on brightly, “Also, who’s Sam?” Steve smiled again. Oh yeah, Tony didn’t know Sam.

“I met him a few days ago – what day is it?” Steve rasped.

“Tuesday” Tony informed him, and it bounced right off the outside of Steve’s head. He had no idea why he’d even asked – days meant nothing to him, at the moment.

“I don’t know when I met him” Steve confessed, and Tony waved him quiet again.

“It’s okay, I’ll ask Sam who he is.” He winced as he said it.

 

_He feels sorry for me. I like that he feels sorry for me._

 

“Sam is in the canteen and he’s happy?” Steve frowned, once he realised he hadn’t understood what Tony had said.

“Sam is in the canteen _with_ Happy” Tony corrected, with a laugh. And Steve remembered Tony’s driver, and smiled at his own misunderstanding.

 

_Why did he bring Happy?_

 

The question came out of nowhere, a simple curiosity plucked from his tangled thoughts. But, as Steve thought about it, everything seemed to unravel.

 

He knew Happy hadn’t driven Tony there. He knew, Happy was always in a separate car, or the passenger seat.

 

And he knew why.

 

How had his impaired and traumatised brain brought up that memory, in such clarity? How, when he wasn’t even able to follow a simple conversation, could he bring up every single detail of that night, last summer. When Steve had finally asked Tony, why don’t you let anyone else drive you? And Tony had blushed just a little – Steve could _see_ it, even now – and sighed, self-consciously.

 

_“This is going to sound stupid, because it is stupid, but mainly because my parents died in a car crash. When it happened… I blamed my dad, because he was driving. It just seemed so stupid that a man who’d masterminded global warfare had been killed by a car, y’know? Like, all he had to do was pay more attention, or whatever… I guess I got it into my head that I was always going to be responsible for that, like that’s what kills Stark men, so if I safeguarded against that… I told you it was stupid.”_

 

Steve remembered every single word. He remembered the pain he could see, buried so deep in Tony, masked by layers of jokes and arrogance, but still there. He remembered that feeling of connection and empathy, being so _glad_ Tony had shared that with him.

 

_Accidents will happen_

 

Suddenly, Steve remembered _everything_. Not just that Tony’s parents hadn’t died in a car crash, but that it was almost certainly Bucky who had killed them. He remembered that Bucky was a brainwashed assassin – _oh, God, Bucky…_ Where was Bucky now, what was he going through? How could Steve ever explain to Tony-

 

_Bucky killed his parents. Bucky_ . 

Steve felt the air around him start to thin. His heart started to kick against the inside of his bruised ribcage. He could taste vomit.

 

“You okay there, Cap?” Tony asked, just a hint of concern in his voice. He sounded miles away, like he was calling to Steve from the end of a very long tunnel… Steve looked at him, helplessly, Tony’s frown deepening the longer it took Steve to respond.

 

_Oh, God, I love you._

 

It would destroy him. How could Steve do that to him? How could he lose Tony? Tony was the one thing in this world that-

 

No, the world was different now. There was no SHIELD, no new structure, no… was there even an Avengers, now? Who did he work for? What did he do? Where did he even live?

 

 _We won, Captain. Your death amounts to the same as your life. A zero sum_  
__  
  


And as that panic started to close in, wave after wave, one thing crashing immediately over the next – all he could think about was Tony. The way a drowning man thinks of oxygen, or a frightened child looks for their mom. Tony was real, even in this chaotic, horrible future, there was Tony. He could trust Tony, Tony would help him, if he could get to Tony-

 

What if he couldn’t? What if he lost _Tony_?

“ _Breathe,_ Steve” Tony warned him, his voice sounding closer now. When Steve looked up Tony was right there, on his feet, his face inches away. Steve hadn’t even seen him move. “The nurse is on his way, okay? It’s going to be okay.”

_Oh, please don’t ever leave me, Tony_

 

It was an agonising thought, a request made direct to God, a primal, human, desperation. He _couldn’t_ do it all again, he just couldn’t. He couldn’t start again, he couldn’t have _no one,_ he couldn’t start learning everything and everyone from scratch. Not now, when everything else was all still ruined, when Bucky still needed him and there were no heroes now and everything was relying on him, he just couldn’t-

 

And then Tony’s hand was on his chest, like a balm. It felt cool, solid. Tony’s hand felt real, and that feeling spread through Steve, flowing directly from that spot where Tony was touching him. His head fell quiet for a moment. His body slowed and let in a deep, jagged breath.

 

“I _promise_ , everything is going to be okay, Steve” Tony told him after a second. “When you’re better, and you will be better, soon, then you can come home, and we’ll work everything out. You will always have a home with us, nothing will ever change that. We’re still the same. Whatever else changes, we’ll still be us.”

 

Steve knew Tony didn’t know what he was saying. Tony wasn’t reassuring Steve over the anxieties in his head, because he didn’t know what they were. He wouldn’t have made those promises, if he’d known… but he was making them _now._ And Steve just needed to hear those things now, Steve just needed there to be someone who would love him, somewhere that was real in spite of everything…

 

And then, of course, the nurse arrived. And Steve already knew he should have said something, but talking was just so difficult, and his head was just so muddled, and now there was all this medical activity to distract him… beeping from the heart monitor, someone adjusting his IV, _a higher dose of sedative.._

 

The world slowly getting heavier, all around him.

 

“Tony-” He tried – he did try. God knows how he thought he was going to manage it, but for just a few seconds longer there was the intention to tell him. The knowledge that he really should…

 

“Shh, Cap, it’s okay” Tony reassured him, as the edges of Steve’s vision got darker. And Steve so much wanted _that_ , wanted it to be okay, wanted that softness he could hear in Tony’s voice.

 

_You can’t tell him._

_You have to tell him._

_You’re not well enough to tell him right now._

_If you don’t tell him now, you’ll never tell him._

 

And then the world went black.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading!


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